


symbiosis

by superstringtheory



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Caretaking, Fever, Fever Dreams, Ghost Sex, Ghosts, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, M/M, Self-Destruction, Sick Character, Sick Klaus Hargreeves, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2020-08-14 02:55:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20185087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superstringtheory/pseuds/superstringtheory
Summary: Klaus' life has always been a ghost story.





	1. Chapter 1

Klaus’ life has always been a ghost story. 

He went to bed with a scratchy throat and pounding head, and wakes up in the middle of the night spiking a fever. 

All of the fun cold medicines are now off-limits if he wants to stick to sobriety, so he dry-swallows ibuprofen and winces at himself in the mirror. 

He rinses his mouth out with some tepid water, and when he glances back up, he almost falls over. Someone else’s reflection is peering at him from over his shoulder. He turns around- nothing- then looks back to the mirror. 

Dave waves at him slowly, and the mirror cracks, splintering out from the middle. 

“Jesus,” Klaus whispers. He takes another swallow of water, then sets the glass down. He follows the scent of tall Vietnamese grass back into the bedroom. 

Dave is sitting on his bed. He pats the pillow. 

“Hi, honey.” 

He looks so real, like any of the myriad of ghosts Klaus tries to ignore every day lately. Being sober  _ suuuucks _ when ghosts are attracted to you like moths to a lamp. Very annoying, talkative moths. 

“Dave?” Klaus’ voice comes out hoarse, and he clears his throat. It hurts, and he shivers- oh yeah, he woke up because he felt like  _ shit _ \- and Dave smiles at him. 

“Are you really there?” This seems obvious, especially to someone who’s seen as many ghosts as Klaus has throughout the years, but it just seems too good to be true. Why would Dave suddenly appear after all this time? 

Klaus had spent months trying to manifest him and nothing worked. Then one of his old contacts hit him up and he didn’t say no and then there were a lot of very unpleasant talkings-to from Diego and Ben, that narc, and now here he is. A few weeks sober, sniffly and feverish because even though he spent years couch-surfing and maintained eerily good health, considering, now that he’s got his own permanent room again of course he’s going to come down with the plague. 

“Sure am, sweetheart.” Dave pats the pillow again. “Why don’t you let me tuck you in? You look a little peaked.” 

Klaus does as he’s told- everything already has that fever dream quality to it, like the world’s been redone in watercolor. 

Once he’s back in bed, Dave smooths the quilt over him, and Klaus swears he can almost feel it. He shivers again, and Dave makes a ‘tsk’ sound in the back of his throat. 

“You aren’t taking very good care of yourself, Klaus.” His tone isn’t disapproving  _ per se _ , but Klaus knows him well enough to feel guilt drop into his stomach like a bomb. 

“I’m not that good at that,” Klaus whispers to his lap, and then there’s a cold feeling on his chin, like someone’s running a melting ice cube along his jawline. 

_ Oh _ , he realizes.  _ Dave. _

“Why are you here?” 

Dave’s ghost is inches from him now, and if Klaus were better at doing, like, the thing he was  _ born _ to do, maybe he could make him real. 

But he’s tired and his throat hurts and he can’t seem to follow a train of thought. 

“I’ve always been with you.” Dave smiles again, and this time it looks sad. 

That can’t be true, though, or Klaus would’ve seen him before-- right? 

Dave’s hand goes through the blankets, and his thigh is plunged into ice. Klaus shudders, and Dave draws away. 

“Sorry.” Dave looks wistful. 

“S’okay.” Klaus sniffles, then wipes his nose on the edge of the quilt. “Wish I’d have known you were coming; I would’ve dressed for the occasion.” He gestures listlessly at himself- he’s wearing a  _ t-shirt _ , for god’s sake, and no accessories. 

“It’s okay,” Dave assures him. “You still look great to me, babe.” 

Klaus manages a smile of his own, then, even though he wants to cry. 

“Shh,” Dave tells him, noticing his change in facial expression. “Why don’t you go back to sleep? I’ll still be here, I promise.” 

Klaus falls asleep feeling watched-over, but in a different way than usual. Instead of a dozen wailing, unhappy inhabitants of the afterlife, there’s just Dave, and a cold sensation running through his hair. 

He could learn to live with this. 

But when he wakes up, Dave is gone. He doesn’t come back that day or night, or anytime. Eventually, Klaus chalks it up to a weird fever dream and doesn’t tell anyone about it. He doesn’t ask Ben whether he’d seen Dave or not because by the time he thinks of it, it sounds trivial and too ludicrous to say out loud. It was a fever dream, nothing more. (Right?) 

Klaus gets on with it- he helps with organizing Dad’s papers. He learns to cook curry and makes it for everyone. He gets a new library card. 

  
So what if his heart jumps a little whenever he sees something spectral out of the corner of his eye? It’s just ghost PTSD, same as he’s always had (and good riddance to Dad for that). It’s not like he’s looking for anybody, because there’s no one there to look for. 

Klaus gets sick again a few weeks later- god, everyone else in his NA group seems to have a million snotty-nosed children, so no wonder- and goes to bed early. 

He wakes up to a familiar presence in the room. 

“Hi, babe,” Dave says. 


	2. Chapter 2

It’s the third time that’s the real charm- the first time was a fluke or a fever dream; the second a coincidence. The third time, though- Klaus can’t deny that there’s a pattern. 

He feels like he’s following threads of logic like a conspiracy theorist, but they’re the most solid thing he’s got right now, other than the sobriety chip burning a hole in his pocket. 

It’s been months since he’s seen Dave, and he’s all but given up on ever seeing him again. With practice, he’s managed to make Ben corporeal again, for several hours at a time- but doing so leaves him dizzy and exhausted, and he thinks that it’s screwing with his immune system because he feels like he’s coming down with something  _ again _ and isn’t that the luck. 

“Maybe it’s because you’re getting a lot of human contact at your new job,” Ben says as Klaus is opening the fridge and peering in. 

“Oh, and I wasn’t before, when I was like, swapping spit all over town? Yeah, I don’t think that’s it.” 

“You’re working with children, Klaus. Kids have germs.” Ben turns a page in the graphic novel he’s reading. 

“I know that.” Klaus rolls his eyes and shuts the fridge again without taking anything out of it. He sighs. “I just didn’t think they’d be so  _ contagious _ .” 

“You should wash your hands more.” Ben turns another page. 

“I didn’t wash my hands for like, a  _ year _ in Vietnam.” 

“And didn’t you get dysentery and almost die?” 

Klaus sniffs. “That’s beside the point. Ugh. My head is killing me.” 

“Maybe try eating something.” 

“No, I feel nauseous.” 

“Nauseated.” 

“That’s what I said. Nauseated.” 

“You said ‘nauseous.’ It’s ‘nause _ a _ ted.’” Ben doesn’t even look up from his book. It figures. Klaus is the only living person he has to interact with and he’d rather commune with the written word.

Klaus sits down at the kitchen table and rubs his temples. “You’re such a pedant.” 

“Look at you with that SAT vocabulary.” 

“Well, I’m the one who actually finished high school, Ben.” 

Ben whistles. “That’s low, even for you.” 

Klaus rests his face on the table. That feels better- he’s so warm and uncomfortable all of a sudden. 

“Ugh. Do you think Mom has some stronger medicine or something?” 

“Generally, yes,” Ben says. “For you? Probably not.” 

There’s a bowl of apples in the middle of the table-- Diego probably bought them, he’s such a domestic at heart-- and Klaus takes one and throws it at Ben, who drops his book. 

“I hope you lost your page,” Klaus says savagely, and shuts his eyes. 

*** 

He wakes up and the kitchen is dark. Ben is gone, god knows where, and a low murmur of the television from upstairs is the only indication that his other siblings are home. They’re probably all engrossed in  _ Downton Abbey _ again; Klaus can pass, he’s had enough family drama of his own, thanks. 

Klaus’ head hurts, a pain that alternately throbs and then squeezes his brain in a vice. His stomach flip-flops unpleasantly at even the mere thought of food, so he decides that maybe taking himself to bed might not be a terrible idea. 

Dave’s sitting in his desk chair when he gets to his room. 

*** 

Klaus makes his way back downstairs to the main room, where Luther has installed a giant flat-screen TV in the spot where Pogo found his demise. 

“Guys,” Klaus says. He waits for Allison to pause the show. He feels a little wobbly on his feet, but that might just be from not eating anything today. “Guys, Dave is in my room again.” 

“Dave?” Luther looks a little confused. “That’s the army guy, right?” 

“Shh,” Vanya says to Luther, then turns back to Klaus. “Are you  _ sure _ about that, Klaus?” Her voice is so sweet and kind and unpresumptuous that Klaus kind of wants to slap her. 

“Yeah,” Diego says. “I thought he had, uh. Moved on. You know.” He makes a wavy hand gesture in the air that he seems to think the better of midway through and then shoves both hands into his lap. 

Okay, so maybe when he got high that last time Klaus vaguely remembers talking Vanya and Diego’s respective ears off about Dave and Vietnam and their super tragic curtailed love story. 

“Well, apparently not.” Klaus shivers a bit, and Allison makes a tsk-ing noise.    
  


“Oh, Klaus, you really don’t look well.” She stands up and goes to him, fitting her well-manicured hand over his face. “You’ve got a fever.” 

“I’m fine,” Klaus says, undeterred, ducking away. “He’s really there. I swear. Just like Ben.” Who’s not there at the moment, but that’s apropos of nothing. Probably. 

“But you can manifest Ben now, right? And not Dave.” Five has always known how to cut to the heart of anything. 

“That doesn’t mean anything…  _ necessarily _ ,” Klaus says. He blinks, hard. God, his head hurts. 

“Here,” Vanya interjects. “Let’s go talk about it in your room, okay?” She gets up and winds her way between the coffee table and her sister, then tugs at Klaus’ elbow. “Come on.” 

*** 

Back in Klaus’ room, Dave is nowhere to be seen. But Klaus knows that doesn’t mean he isn’t there. He’s never been one to rely on proving a negative. 

Klaus sits on top of his quilt and watches Vanya bustle around the room and into the adjoining bathroom. He can hear the tap running and the medicine cabinet opening and closing and she comes back with a glass of water and two little red ibuprofen tablets in her open palm. 

Klaus takes the glass of water. “ _ Merci _ ,” he says, and holds the glass up to his forehead before taking a drink. It feels glorious. His body can’t seem to decide how it feels at the moment- whether it wants to be boiling or frostbitten- and he can’t help thinking of that old Robert Frost poem, the one about the fire and the ice. 

He feels too slow and heavy, and all of his joints ache, his bones pushing up against his skin in ways that don’t feel right. 

Vanya clears her throat, and Klaus opens his eyes- god, he hadn’t even realized he’d shut them- and takes the proffered pills and swallows them down with a gulp of water. He shivers at the sensation, and Vanya’s face softens. 

“Want to get under the covers?” she asks, and Klaus has a hard time deciding. Finally, he ends up with the blanket bunched up around his lap. 

“Okay,” Vanya says, sitting herself down on the desk chair. Klaus’ heart gives a little skip as he thinks about how he’d just seen Dave there not so long ago. “So why don’t you start from the beginning.” 

So Klaus tells her about the first time he saw Dave- how he woke up in the middle of the night feeling unwell, and there Dave was in the mirror. How it could’ve been a dream, some sort of feverish wish fulfillment- except for the other times. 

“I think being sick messes with my powers somehow. Well, more specifically, having a fever helps me tap into something I can’t access otherwise. It lets me see Dave.” Klaus is aware that he sounds rambling, like someone who’s high or maybe on the edge of delirium. 

“I see.” Vanya looks thoughtful, chewing on her lip. She tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “So, let’s say that your hypothesis is correct. Why isn’t Dave here now?” 

Klaus blows out a hard breath. “I don’t  _ know _ .” 

“Because you can see Ben even when other people are there, right? Just not Dave.” 

Klaus stops himself from saying the first thing that comes to mind, because Vanya’s just trying to help and she’s thinking out loud. 

“ _ Tru-ue _ ,” he says, drawing the word out. “Maybe he’s just shy. Or I have to be alone for it to work. I don’t know, Vanya. It just- it doesn’t make sense. But I swear he was-- _ is _ \-- there.” 

“I believe you.” Vanya says it a little too quickly, but Klaus figures he can’t fault her for that. He  _ is  _ a recently back on the bandwagon former drug addict. And he didn’t exactly give her a lot of reasons to trust him back when they were teenagers. At least he presumes- his memory of the first year or two after Ben died is pretty spotty. 

“Thanks, Vanya.” Klaus says, and then a violent shudder goes through him. “Sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” 

Vanya’s eyes soften. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Klaus. You’re just sick. Now get some rest. Maybe Dave will be back when you wake up.” 

It’s sweet of her to say, but Klaus can tell that she doesn’t really buy it. Instead of arguing the points, he lets her tuck him in and refill his water glass and make him promise to come get her if he needs anything. 

Once he’s sure she’s well down the stairs, Klaus drops the two pills he’d palmed into the space between the bed and the wall. The sleight of hand he’d picked up somewhere hadn’t done him wrong yet. 

Klaus sits up in bed and waits for Dave to come back. 

*** 

And he had- he’d come back and told Klaus he looked like shit and Klaus had tried  _ so, so  _ hard to make him flesh and blood but all he’d managed to do was shake from fever chills and make his headache even worse. And Dave hadn’t been interested in talking about them or anything- he’d gotten so hung up over the little bitty,  _ insignificant _ detail that Klaus was sick, a-fucking- _ gain _ , that they never got to anything else. 

Then Klaus had fallen asleep, Dave’s incorporeal hand like a cold compress in the vague area of his forehead. And his fever broke, burning out just as fast as it had come on. 

Klaus has never been so ungrateful to feel well in his entire life. 

After another week of no Dave and only the usual woefully fashion-unforward and annoying dead, Klaus comes up with a plan. 

“I thought you were newly committed to sobriety,” Ben says as they’re walking downtown. 

“Shh,” Klaus hisses. “I’m looking for someone.” 

After he scores what he came here for, Klaus tucks it into his coat pocket and gets on the bus back home. 

“Just so you know,” Ben says, sitting across from him, “I one hundred percent don’t support this harebrained scheme of yours.” 

“Oh, shut it,” Klaus says, louder than he means to, and a lady across the aisle scoots down a row. 

Klaus pats his coat pocket and smiles to himself. Ben is wrong. This is one hundred percent going to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [This](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44263/fire-and-ice) is the Robert Frost poem referred to. 
> 
> At least one more chapter to this, or maybe two. ;)


	3. Chapter 3

And it does- it really does- at least for a few desperate, breathless hours. 

Klaus hasn’t had heroin in  _ years _ , or any opioid, really- it was never really his speed. Speed, hah. Well, that was never really his gig either, but he can still appreciate the joke. 

The high is good, he has to admit that. It lets him float away from everything- missing Dave, his dysfunctional family, the endless screaming of hundreds of lost souls… 

The withdrawal is unpleasant, sure. But it’s worth it. As Klaus is sweating and shaking his way through it, spitting into a bucket, that’s all he can think. That this is going to let him see Dave again, and that’s worth a little discomfort. 

Sure, of course Dave appears as Klaus is puking into the bucket. He pushes sweaty hair out of his eyes and looks at Dave’s ghost in the doorway. 

“Honey, you’re home,” he says, and leans forward to throw up again. 

***

Dave’s sympathetic at first, until Klaus’ big mouth goes and babbles about his Great Idea, how he’s figured out a way that they can be together anytime. 

All it’ll take is some casual, recreational opioid usage and subsequent withdrawal- no big. Klaus has been a casual (well, frequent- but frequent can still be casual!) drug user for years now, and look at him. 

Sure, look at him- he’s got a puke bucket and he’s talking to his dead boyfriend. His shirt is soaked through with sweat and he’s going on about how developing a  _ casual  _ heroin addiction is what is really going to make his life better. 

“I won’t come back again if you keep doing this,” Dave says. “I won’t watch you destroy yourself.” 

“I’m doing this for  _ us _ ,” Klaus says, and it’s exactly the wrong thing to say. 

“ _ Us _ ?” He’s never seen that kind of expression on Dave’s--  _ his _ Dave’s-- face before. Dave’s ghost steps closer, and for a flicker of a moment, Klaus can actually feel Dave’s hand gripping his forearm in a vice. “This isn’t about  _ us _ , Klaus. This is about you not being able to let go. This”-- the feeling flickers out again, and Dave’s hand passes through Klaus’ arm-- “this isn’t real.” 

*** 

So much for that plan. Klaus has a backup, though- a Plan B. 

He keeps going to his job at the community center’s after school care program for at-risk youth. So what if he stops washing his hands as much as he should or shying away from the sniffling, snotty little ones? 

It starts with a sore throat again, so bad that he wakes up from a dead sleep because it hurts too much. It progresses into a persistent cough and low-grade fever, and Klaus should’ve bought stock in Kleenex long ago. 

He sneezes and coughs his way through the rest of the week, grumbling when his boss sends him home from work early and tells him not to come back until he’s not running a fever and spreading germs everywhere. 

Still, there’s no Dave. Klaus decides he’ll have to force the reaction- at its most basic level, everything is chemistry. He just has to find the right catalyst. 

As he’s getting off the bus on the other side of the city, Ben’s trailing him like an unwanted shadow. 

“Couldn’t you just”-- Klaus breaks off to cough into his elbow, and wince when he’s done, because  _ sweet Jesus his chest hurts _ \-- “like, take a page out of  _ Peter Pan _ or something and get lost? I don’t need you following me around.” 

Ben listens to him cough again and then watches him have to prop himself up against the side of a building to catch his breath. 

“I don’t have anything better to do. Perk of being dead.” He shrugs, and Klaus wants to make an annoyed, breathy sound but for that he’d need some  _ breath _ , which seems to be in short supply nowadays. 

Staying outside late into the chilly night is  _ super _ not good for you when you’re already sick, but Klaus relishes the feeling. 

Even Ben gives up on him eventually, going off to wherever it is that he goes, leaving Klaus alone to shiver in an alleyway. He stays until his throat is so raw from coughing and he can’t ignore the whispers (and, well, shrieks. They’re always shrieks) of the restless dead anymore.

Back at home past midnight, he rummages through the infirmary until he finds what he’s looking for. He bites on a sliver of glass and mercury and finds himself sitting pretty at 103. He’s bending to put the thermometer away again when there’s a distinctive knock at the door. 

“Klaus, sweetheart? What are you doing in here so late?” 

Well, of all the things. 

*** 

Grace takes one look at Klaus and insists on giving him a full workup- she even makes him get up on the examination table. She takes his temperature again and tsks at the reading-- “We’ll have to do something about that fever, young man!”-- and uses a pen light to look into his throat and ears. 

She listens to his chest and frowns, and Klaus can’t stop coughing at that point, which is just his luck. 

“I think you have the beginnings of pneumonia, Klaus,” she says. 

“But you knew that, didn’t you?” Ben interjects from the doorway, and Klaus hisses at him to shut up. 

Grace swivels to look at the empty door and hallway beyond, then reconfigures. 

“I’ll get you started on some antibiotics right away. That cough is downright  _ nasty _ , Klaus. You poor thing.” She rests her cool hand on his forehead and Klaus can’t help but lean into it a little. 

“This is what you wanted, right?” Ben says as Grace moves over to the cabinets in the infirmary. “I bet you aren’t even going to take those antibiotics.” 

Klaus huffs and turns his head away. Stupid Ben. Not like  _ he’s _ the clairvoyant one. 

Grace comes back with a bottle of pills that she hands to Klaus. 

“Twice a day, dear, for ten days. Now go get some rest! Come back if you need anything else.” She presses a light kiss to Klaus’ cheek, and Klaus gets down off of the examination table. He stashes the bottle of pills in his back pocket and heads back up to his room. He only has to stop twice to rest and catch his breath and let the heavy soup replacing his brain and lungs resettle. 

Klaus falls asleep feeling like there’s an elephant on his chest, or at least a very large water buffalo. 

*** 

He wakes himself up coughing, and Dave’s there again, just like every other time. The world feels David Lynchian- surrealism painted in shades of blue, shadows deeper than usual. 

His bedside table lamp flickers and then stays on, and Klaus blinks, eyes heavy. 

  
“Dave?” His voice is shot, holding on by a thread of a whisper of a prayer. Thoughts and prayers, that’s what’s going to keep him going. 

“I’m here, Klaus.” Dave already sounds upset, like he can’t just take this for the miracle or magic that it is; this thing that’s going to let them be together again. 

“Dave.” Klaus just repeats his name, a rosary. 

“You’ve got to let this go, Klaus.” Dave cuts right to it. His gaze is unwavering. “This isn’t good for you.” 

“Well, what if I’m not ready for that? I found a way to make this work and I’m doing it. There’s always tit for tat, quid pro quo. I’m willing to live with this in order to see you.” Klaus’ voice breaks on the last word. He’s gone hoarse from coughing. He can really feel that he’s feverish now because his emotions are on the edge, ready to bubble up and over. 

“Oh, sweetheart,” Dave says. He sits on the edge of the bed again, and Klaus moves to sit next to him. “You’re so sick, and it’s so hard to watch you like this.” 

Klaus swallows a cough. 

“This”-- Dave gestures at Klaus-- “is not sustainable. You’re going to overdose or choke on your own lungs.” 

“So?” 

Dave sighs. 

“If I’m honest, Klaus… I think you’re trying too hard. When you’re sick like this, your guard is down. Your powers are a little more free. That ability to make me real is clearly there, but I think you’re scared. If I’m real, you’ll have to actually deal with real things.”

“Me? Trying too hard? Have you  _ seen _ what I’ve been doing?” Klaus loses the fraying strands of his voice and he has to stop for a few tempered swallows of water. 

“If you ask me,” Dave continues, “You’ve never really known  _ what _ you’re capable of because you’ve been so scared of your power. That thing with Ben was just the beginning.” 

“Well,” Klaus bites back. “Good thing no one asked you, then.” Of course, because he has the worst timing ever, then he sneezes and it’s loud and hurts everywhere from his chest to his sinuses. 

“ _ Klaus _ .” 

“What?” God, what is  _ wrong _ with him? His dead boyfriend’s ghost is here; basically the one thing he’s wanted every single day since he got back from 1968, and he can’t even manage basic civility. 

“I think you should take your medicine and rest. I’ll still be around. You just have to learn how to find me with your power.” 

“That’s some real low  _ Lion King _ shit, Dave,” Klaus says, but it’s hollow- both because he’s exhausted and because Dave was born in the 1950s and has no idea what kind of family tragedy Walt Disney would dream up in 1994. 

Dave’s right, though, and they both know it. Klaus has been walking on this knife edge for months now, ever since he came back from Vietnam and the world didn’t actually end as scheduled. 

“I’m sorry,” Klaus mutters eventually, and this time, he can feel Dave’s arms around him in a brief hug. 

“Just sleep, babe,” Dave says, and Klaus falls asleep with Dave’s fingers running through his hair. 

***

The next morning, Klaus takes the antibiotics Mom had given him as prescribed, and while he knows that it’ll take longer than a day, he already feels better. 

He talks to Ben about working on his powers again, and apologizes for being an asshole and making Ben watch him do drug deals and try to come down with pneumonia. 

“I didn’t have anything better to do,” Ben says mildly. “At least it was interesting.” 

Typical Ben. 

He takes a lot of naps, for about a week. The rest of the time is spent coughing and blowing his nose and generally feeling sick, but he gets better. Turns out not actively sabotaging your health can help? 

He starts going back to NA meetings, and Ben comes too, because he “likes to hear the crazy shit those people get up to.” Klaus is surprised when one day someone asks him about his “Korean boyfriend who’s always hanging around the back”- it takes him a full thirty seconds to realize that they’re referring to  _ Ben _ . Who’s dead. And not visible to anyone else. Supposedly. 

“People think you’re my boyfriend,” Klaus says to Ben under his breath a minute later, and Ben just raises an eyebrow halfway. 

“I’m not sure who should feel more insulted by that. But still, progress!” He reaches out to pat Klaus on the shoulder, and his hand connects- and stays present. 

It’s the longest Klaus has ever manifested Ben, and he  _ wasn’t even trying _ . 

Huh. He feels like Eliza Dolittle in  _ My Fair Lady _ ; he thinks he’s got it. 

*** 

A few weeks later, Klaus introduces Dave to the rest of the family. 

“I have a new power,” he says. “It’s called sobriety. Who knew?” 

Dave rolls his eyes, and everyone seems to take that as proof that he belongs. Sure, he’s not there  _ all  _ of the time, and neither is Ben, but it doesn’t take everything out of Klaus just to keep them on this side of the curtain. Really, he doesn’t have to try much for them to be here, and isn’t that the kicker? 

Plus, he’s able to tune out the rest of the often-irritable (with good reason, but still) and irritating dead much more easily lately, and it’s almost hilarious how he’s been trying for years to drown them out with pharmaceuticals and it turns out all he really needed to do was relax and, like, get enough sleep. 

That night, Klaus goes to bed with Dave curled around him, and he thinks he might just up and die of the domesticity of it all. 

“This is nice,” he whispers, and Dave nods against his shoulder. He’s fitted up against Klaus like a comma, or some new kind of parenthetical. It makes Klaus feel complete in a way he never has in this house, in this timeline. 

For the first time in his life, he feels like he actually belongs. 

*****

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr](superstringtheory.tumblr.com) so if you want to call me or beep me you know where to reach me.


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